Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

The reclassification comes after Pacific Legal Foundation, in 2014, filed a suit against the agency for failing to act on a 2012 petition, in which PLF — representing nonprofit group Save the Crystal River Inc.— asked FWS to consider downlisting the manatee from endangered to threatened. Save the Crystal River enlisted the help of PLF after manatee boating zones were proposed for Kings Bay, which would have increased driving time for boaters living in the Crystal River area.

Unlike land animals like panthers — which must have three separate populations of 240 or more to be removed from the ESA list — manatee recovery is based on eliminating or controlling threats, mostly watercraft deaths. Protections must also be in place for warm-water refuge sites, freshwater spring systems and foraging habitat, according to FWS records.

Manatees are warm-water marine mammals that are more susceptible to illness when water temperatures drop below 68 degrees. During winter months, when water temperatures can sometimes dip into the 50s, manatees seek refuge in smaller rivers and creeks — which stay several degrees warmer, on average, than coastal waters that are more exposed to cold winds and fronts.

Spots like Manatee Park on the Orange River near Interstate 75 are magnets for wintering manatees as a Florida Power & Light plant discharges warm water into the river. Hundreds can sometimes be seen swimming and resting in the man-made refuge.

Manatee advocates concede that the population and environmental factors may have warranted a downlisting in 2007, but threats from red tide, loss of foraging grounds, sea level rise and a growing economy, some say, will continue to threaten sea cows.

According to the FWS Florida Manatee Recovery Plan, manatees can be downlisted if their annual survival rate is 90 percent or greater, the average annual percentage of adult females accompanied by first- or second-year calves in winter is at least 40 percent and the annual average population rate is equal to or greater than zero. Some or all of those criteria have been documented in recent years.

Manatees could be removed from the ESA list if, after downlisting, those conditions continue for another decade.